


Anything That Sticks

by inbox



Series: Psychic Load [9]
Category: Cable (Comics), Punisher (Comics)
Genre: Amputation, Blood and Gore, Body Horror, M/M, Shock, Telekinesis
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-23
Updated: 2019-10-23
Packaged: 2020-12-28 21:11:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,896
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21143270
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inbox/pseuds/inbox
Summary: Frank knows he's staring. He's consciously aware that he's standing there, gun loose in his hands and muzzle pointed down, staring in idiot shock at the sight of Cable slumped against a wall in a pool of blood.The fact that Cable is conscious is surprising, but welcome. The fact that his arm is missing from the bicep down is more of a shock. The shining threads of metal twisting and squirming like living things over a core of ragged bloody meat and glistening blue steel bone, however, have thrown Frank's brain into a hard stall.





	Anything That Sticks

**Author's Note:**

  * For [SenkoWakimarin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SenkoWakimarin/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Gristle](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21151946) by [SenkoWakimarin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SenkoWakimarin/pseuds/SenkoWakimarin). 

> For ifridiot and synergy.

Frank knows he's staring. He's consciously aware that he's standing there, gun loose in his hands and muzzle pointed down, staring in idiot shock at the sight of Cable slumped against a wall in a pool of blood. 

The fact that Cable is conscious is surprising, but welcome. The fact that his arm is missing from the bicep down is more of a shock. The shining threads of metal twisting and squirming like living things over a core of ragged bloody meat and glistening blue steel bone, however, have thrown Frank's brain into a hard stall.

“Your arm,” he says. “Summers, jesus christ, your arm.”

“I'm fine,” says the man minus one arm, sitting in blood that's soaking up through his tactically useless bright blue pants and staining them an ugly purple. “It looks worse than it is.”

“Your arm,” he says more urgently. “_Fuck. We_ need to tourniquet it, stop the bleeding. How long have you been like this?” He reaches for his belt, unsnapping the buckle to pull it free. 

“It's fine. I've got it under control.” Cable grimaces and kicks at the lump dropped by his feet, wet fabric and raw meat and writhing threads of metal. “Keep away from it.”

It's Cable’s arm, Frank realises in a kind of grim horror. Cable is sitting in his own blood, with his severed arm dropped at his side, telling Frank he's fine. 

For the first time in decades Frank feels faintly sick at the sight of blood. Blood shouldn't have squirming flecks of alive metal in it. A severed arm shouldn't be moving like that. That's a fundamental law of the universe kind of thing, he feels. A piece of dead meat should not be moving independently. A piece of meat should not be shot through with metal filigree that rises and falls, stretches and coils. 

“Castle,” says Cable, and something in his tone of voice brings Frank back to attention. “Don't touch the arm.”

“The night nurse,” Frank says. “Waterside. I can get us there in an hour. Fuck. You better have an hour in you. Jesus christ, Summers. What the fuck.”

“Frank.” Cable laughs at him like this happens every day, ‘cept the hard lines around his mouth give away how hard he's forcing it. “Listen to me. I need you to not touch my arm, or me.”

“Tourniquet,” he says again, latching on to the one thing he knows upside down and inside out in this kind of situation. Bleeding, and how to staunch it. “I've got some clot packs in the van.”

“_Captain Castle. _” Cable snaps his name so sharp that Frank hoves to attention, parade rest, the echoes of every hardass gunny that's ever screamed in his face puppeting his muscles before he can even register it. His gun sways in its sling, knocking against his hip. 

Cable lifts his shoulder - the shoulder attached to the arm that's half missing,_ what the fuck _ \- and wipes his forehead on his sleeve, sweat beading at his temples. “Actually, you know what? Get the clot. I'm holding this back but it's not easy.”

Frank says _ okay _ right as he realises what Cable means by holding it back, the iron force of will telekinetically locking down a thousand tiny channels, and chants _ what the fuck what the fuck what the fuck _ under his breath like a mantra as he beats feet back to his van to drop his rifle in exchanged for grabbed handfuls of hemostatic dressings and waterproof covers.

He's seen Cable winged before; lucky shots mostly, wild ricochets that clipped him on the leg or thudded into his body armour. One time he saw Cable take one in the chest and felt his heart lodge in his mouth before the big fucker glowed blue and the bullet pushed back out, its shiny copper jacket mashed flat on the end. That time it took Cable a bit to get his breath back but he still slapped Frank on the shoulder and said, _ takes more than that _before shaking it off and getting back to the fight. 

He's never seen Cable injured before, really injured, and it's throwing Frank for a loop that he's caught so off-balance by it. He sees people get injured every day. Hell, he's usually the one injuring them. Even before he took up his current career he spent enough time working on jobs for The Company that he's more than familiar with trench surgery, but this…

Shit. It's shit and it's different and it's bringing back all sorts of memories, bodies in the grass, and he's gonna fucking murder Cable if he gets back to where he's slumped over and the big asshole has bled out on him. 

He can't do this shit again. He can't. He's gonna go out of his head if he has to watch someone he loves die all bloody and pathetic in a pool of their own blood. Never again, never again. 

“I'll kill you if you're dead,” he says to Cable, dropping to his knees and reaching for his messy mangled arm. 

Cable says something. Frank doesn't hear it. There's an invisible sledgehammer swinging onto his chest, and the blood is roaring in his ears as he gets flung backwards away from the man slumped over in front of him. 

Time goes into slow motion as his feet leave the ground. Cable’s face twists up in a slow snarl, every muscle moving in perfect harmony as the light from his dud eye shines sick off-white. Frank wheezes as he's thrown across the room, a tidal wave of force catching him in the sternum and knocking the breath out of him even before he pinwheels into the wall and collapses. 

“Do not,” pants Cable, “Touch me. I told you.”

The blood is flowing free from his arm now, running wet between his fingers. Cable grimaces, the cold light from his eye snapping and biting into the air as he holds his arm clamped tight to his side. “Don't,” he says again, his voice tight as a drum. “Please don't do that, Frank.”

“Bandages,” he gasps, gesturing at the messy pile of packets that got scattered on the floor when Frank went flying. “Quikclot.” He thumps at his chest, willing his throat to open up so he can breathe again. 

Cable grits his teeth and, miracle of miracles, the blood pulsing through his fingers slows to a steady drip. 

“The fuck,” says Frank, staggering to his feet. He stumbles back across the room, skirting wide ‘round Cable’s damaged side and the severed piece of metal and meat at his feet. “You need me to open them for you.”

“Yeah,” says Cable. “Guess you could say I need a hand.”

“Shut the hell up,” says Frank on pure reflex. “Goddamn it. If I open and put these down they're not gonna be sterile.”

“I’ve called for an evac, someone's gonna take me to Krakoa in a few.” He closes his eyes, brows drawn tight. “Can't bodyslide out and keep this under control.” Cable shrugs again, that weird lopsided rise and fall that only highlights how much arm he's missing. “We can worry about sterile conditions another day.”

Frank stares at the stump hanging loose under the tight squeeze of Cable's flesh hand, red meat and twisting threads of metal, sinuously twisting and testing the air. Alive, ambiguously alive. 

_ What the fuck, what the fuck. _

The process of wrapping Cable’s stump takes too long for Frank's liking. He unwraps each clotting pad with steady hands and slides them across the floor, kept a few feet back from the pool of blood by the uncomfortable painful grimace Cable turns on him whenever he gets too close. 

The more the clotting wraps work, the more Cable relaxes; the more Cable relaxes, the more Frank feels like he's on the fraying edge of his sanity. The wild dog in his head is snarling at its leash, ready to snap and savage at Cable for being so damn casual about one of the weirdest goddamn gory scenes Frank has unwillingly taken part in. 

“When did you--”

“Frank. Listen to me. There is something dangerous in that arm that you have to stay away from. You can't touch it. The blood too. Not with gloves on, not at all.”

He grits his teeth. “Was gonna ask why you didn't tell me someone took your arm off.” Frank sits back on his heels, left knee popping loudly. “I know I heard you stop firing. Then, pop,” he snaps his fingers, a sharp crack of noise in the otherwise quiet space, “You fell outta my head and I'm left in the dark to finish up and look for you.” 

Cable stares at him. 

The words are stuck at the back of Frank's throat, prickly and dry. _ I walked in and I thought you were dead, _ for one. _ You went dark and I thought you got iced, _ that's another one. _ I got a bad track record with watching people I love die ripped up and messy in a puddle of their own blood, _that's a doozy too. 

Frank's brain catches up slow on the back end of that train of thought and he thinks, _ oh no_. 

“The metal,” he says, changing subjects before his dumbshit brain starts confessing all his sins, or he starts an argument over Cable’s rare yet always disastrous clusterfucks when running point on their jobs. “Your arm. That's it?”

Cable tilts his head back against the concrete wall, eyes closed. “This is not how I wanted to have this conversation,” he tells the ceiling. “Yeah. It's dangerous. It's a kind of transmode infection, turns organic matter to living metal. If I didn't have this--” he reaches up to tap his temple like he always does when talking about his mutant magic shit, ‘cept he does it with the arm that stops too short. Frank makes a noise in the back of his throat, half hysterical. Cable ignores him. “--telekinetic force to keep it in check it would've killed me decades ago. Hurts like a sonofabitch every day, morning to night, even when I sleep. Not like I can do anything to fix it though. Not anything that sticks.”

He opens one eye to squint at Frank. “You can't catch it from me, Castle. Don’t… I wouldn’t let you risk it.” He pauses, clearly drawing together his thoughts. “Guess I should’ve told you earlier.”

“I thought it was a prosthetic. Some high tech thing.”

Cable laughs, closing his eyes again. “I’ve had one. It didn’t look great. Guy who made it gave me pointy fingers.” He goes quiet for a while, breathing steady. “Don’t sweat it, Frank. Not the first time my arm has been taken off. Half the time it’s the first thing anyone tries to do to me. It always grows back, or they’ll bag this one and let it reattach.”

“Reattach? Graft it on?” Frank keeps sneaking looks at the lump of arm by Cable’s feet, the way the raw end of it keeps moving under the tattered end of blood-soaked shredded sleeve.

“Last time Hank used duct tape. He said it was medical duct tape but I think he was giving me shit. Hard to tell now his face has changed again.”

Frank nods, not understanding anything in that sentence other than ‘duct tape’. He’s got a pretty good idea of what that entails though, a bunch of duct tape and living metal seeking living metal, knitting Cable back together like an old doll. 

_ What the_ _fuck_, he thinks._ What in the goddamn hell is this. _

From a distance he thinks he should be furious at Cable for keeping this from him, ‘cept that’s not how it works. Not really. They’ve both got their secrets, and realistically that’s always how it was gonna be. 

No, he’s thinking more about all those times he’s let Cable wrap that arm ‘round him, or he’s kissed and sucked those thick blood-warm fingers while Cable watched him through half-closed eyes and murmured all kinds of things about Frank being the sweetest cocksucker he knew, or he’s clutched at the raw seam of flesh and metal while they fucked and Cable exploded in his head with pleasure at the way his nerves lit up arclight bright at the touch. All this time it’s been a hostile invader between them, not an extension of Cable that he's touched and kissed and welcomed into his body, yet that’s not even the thing that Frank suspects he’s gonna be angry about later. 

Nah. Not that. It’s his words - _ hurts like a sonofabitch every day morning to night, even when I sleep _ \- that are ringing in Frank’s head like all the bells of hell. All this goddamn time he's been petting Frank's brain and burning his rage off like sunlight on fog, soothing down headaches and turning pain into syrupy molten gold, and he's never once mentioned that he's hurting too. 

Secrets are fine. Not sharing the fact that each and every day is some kind of fresh agony, though, holding that back when he's had such intimate access to the very root of Frank's hurts? That feels big. That feels like something he - they - are gonna have to deal with later.

“The blood--”

“There’s still bits of me in there. Mostly just blood vessels at this point, a couple of muscles that won’t convert. Or didn’t convert, I guess? They’re gone now. Now you know I’ll be fair game from the bicep down.” Despite the strain ‘round his eyes and the sweat beading at his temples, there’s something almost fond in his expression when he looks over at Frank. “Thanks for sticking around.”

Frank looks at his watch, half to check the time and half to hide the fact that he’s got no idea how to handle any of this. Every single bit of this - the smell of blood starting to dry tacky and dark, the smell of old adrenaline and sweat and spent gunpowder, the way Cable is just _ laying there _ \- is setting off all kinds of horseshit in his head. He can already feel a knot forming at the base of his skull, a herald to a heavy migraine like the smell of ozone is to a storm. 

He’s gotta clean up their job still. There’s no one left alive in the building, he made damn sure of that, but he’s gotta sweep the rooms and look for the hard drive that Cable was looking for in the first place. Then there’s cleaning up here, bagging all the bandage wrappers with their fingerprints, trying to remember the route he took while rabbiting to the van in a panic so he can wipe the doorknobs clean. Jesus. No idea how he’s gonna get Cable out without broaching the gap that Cable insists on, or bag up that arm, or--

“Hey. I’ve got pickup coming in in a few minutes. Might be, uh, more diplomatically smooth if you’re gone before they get here.” Cable looks genuinely remorseful, as stupid as that idea sounds in Frank’s head. “Save us both the interrogation, huh?”

“Gotta do clean up,” he says, terse. “Can’t let--”

“Frank.” Cable gives him a wan smile. The light leaking from his dud eye looks dull and flat, and somehow that’s even more of a kick in the teeth to Frank than the rest of the fuckin’ low budget slasher movie he’s currently an unwilling participant in. “This is not my first ride, Captain Castle. They’re people I trust. They’ll do me right, and you know I’ll always do right by you.”

A brief flicker of formless touch presses under Frank’s chin, forcing him to look up, like he’s a recalcitrant child in need of reprimanding. “Hey,” Cable repeats firmly. “Frank. I’ll always do right by you.”

“Fine,” he says, the fight bleeding out of him. “Fine, jesus. Okay. I’m going.”

“I’ll be fine,” Cable says again. “You know me. Unkillable to the end.”

“Yeah,” he says, reluctantly getting to his feet. _ No, goddamnit, _ he thinks, wondering when he got so damn soft. Walking away from a man down like this suddenly feels wrong. Walking away from Cable, torn up and miserable with blood staining his ugly blue tac pants, suddenly feels like a punch in the guts. All these years - all these decades - he’s spent hardening himself against the tactical weakness of attachment and friendliness and connection, all thrown out ‘cause he’s flat-spinning out on old memories. 

Nothing else, Frank tells himself, fully aware that he’s lying to himself and lying badly at that. 

He’s churning gravel halfway out the gate when a burst of bright white light catches his eye in the rear vision mirror, flaring through the dirty soaped windows somewhere right around the room he left Cable in. Frank changes gear and stares grimly forward, knuckles blanched white as he grips the wheel, doing his best to ignore the feral dog in his head straining at its choke chain back towards the warehouse, frothing and maddened and desperate to race back and stand guard. 

_ Duct tape,_ he thinks, painfully aware that he’s not gonna be able to get the sight of living metal twisting and testing the air towards Frank, the words _hurts like a sonofabitch every day morning to night,_ out of his head for weeks. _ Fucking duct tape. _

**Author's Note:**

> [stryfeposting.tumblr.com](http://stryfeposting.tumblr.com)

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Gristle](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21151946) by [SenkoWakimarin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SenkoWakimarin/pseuds/SenkoWakimarin)


End file.
